Building Committee – Background and Recent Updates
A History of the Building Program
In February 2004, the Church Council chartered a “Building Proposals Study Group” to review, study, and report on purchasing property surrounding St. Luke’s, reviewing options for expanding St. Luke’s facilities, and reviewing options for increasing parking capacity. Specific facility enhancements were building a large “multi-purpose” room with a state-of-the-art kitchen.
In December 2006, the church contracted with a design-build company, Myler Corporation, a recognized leader in the church and religious facilities construction. In the past 30 years, Myler has worked with over 1,000 churches providing professional design/build services designed to support the ministries of the Church and its people.
Myler made a presentation in March 2007 to the church leadership with facility proposals to meet the ministry needs identified by the church.This proposal priced at approximately $4.5 million included a large multi purpose room with a kitchen, a new food pantry, renovations to many existing rooms, new administrative space, several new classrooms,slight improvement in parking, and a new choir room.
The church leadership embraced this proposal but due to the poor economic climate, decided to put the project on hold.The Building Committee continued to identify needs to improve the project and the cost grew to $5.5 million.
In the summer of 2009, the church decided to awaken the project with presentations to the congregation, preceding a church wide vote and a capital campaign.Because of the complexity of accomplishing these tasks, the firm of J. R. Klote Associates was hired in August 2009 to develop the informative presentations and manage the capital campaign
The Building Committee Chair met with the Church Staff on September 23, 2009 to review the project plans.On October 19, the building committee met to review changes to the drawings and to begin planning for the feasibility study. We asked Myler to make changes to the drawings in preparation for the upcoming Feasibility Study presentations to the St Luke’s UMC laity which would start approximately mid-January 2010.
The Building Committee met with Steve Retorick, Myler Project Manager, on November 11, 2009.The primary objectives were to have a review of the building plans, make changes before the church begins its feasibility study on January 11, 2010, and to ask Myler to provide updated drawings suitable for the presentations to the St. Luke’s laity during the feasibility study.
On January 11, 2010, Glendon Smith, our on-site consultant from J. R. Klote Associates, started a series of focus group sessions which continued in February for the purpose of updating the congregation on the current planning, while answering questions and taking comments.Presentations were made to more than 250 members of the congregation at more than 20 focus group sessions.
On February 21, 2010, a Church Conference was convened for the purpose of a vote to proceed to final design. Many verbal presentations were made at the conference – some in favor and others opposed. A vote was taken and the majority supported proceeding with the project.
A “Kick off” dinner was held in the multi purpose room at Warwick UMC, Newport News, VA on April 18, 2010.The total pledged by the first 60 pledges was announced at the dinner in the amount of over $1 million.
Following that event, the capital campaign started to seek pledges from the remainder of the congregation with payments to be made over the next 3 to 5 years.The capital campaign continued through September 2010.The final tally of the 197 pledges was slightly less than $2 million.
Since the project cost had increased to over $5.5 million and the pledges were about $2 million, the need to review the financial aspects of the project was apparent.The building committee contacted three local banks and asked them to provide a pre approved construction loan amount for St Luke’s UMC.Each bank came back with their maximum loan numbers of about 3 million – well below the $5.5 million estimated cost of the project as originally planned.
The Building Committee met and identified the most urgent ministry needs to be accomplished in the construction project – to include the Outreach Center, a new kitchen, new classrooms, a new food pantry and a capability to expand at a future date.
Our design/build agent, Myler, was asked to revise the project scope to meet our essential needs within a cost we could finance. Myler went back to the drawing boards and provided a proposal on June 2, 2011 which the Building Committee reviewed and unanimously endorsed on June 13.On June 14, the Church Council was informed of the action by the Building Committee and fully supported the action.
Design work began on June 15, 2011 and should be complete by the end of 2011.
In the past, the stand of trees where the new facilities will be constructed has been referred to as “the grove”.To help carry on the tradition of remembering the past as we look to the future, the new building will be named “The Grove”.
Once design is complete, there are several local approvals required and the final endorsement of the church at a Charge Conference.
Bids for the work can then be solicited and lowest responsive bidders will be awarded contracts for the project.The construction work will take from 12 to 18 months under supervision of Myler and the Building Committee.During the construction period, there will be disruption to some activities as we build for the future.Every effort will be made to minimize this impact.
